The politics of Elect Me

David Cameron's extraordinary announcement this week that he intends to foist hordes of women onto the boards of private companies, based entirely on gender and with no respect to merit, is an indictment of the worst kind of modern political standards.

Back in the day, politicians had policies. They were elected on the basis of those policies and, whilst in power, did their best to enact them. This worked quite well; if those policies proved unworkable or became unpopular to a greater extent, then next time around someone else got elected. Parties were defined broadly by their political and social convictions, and you knew roughly what you were getting. A bit like the difference between buying your chosen brand, If it worked for you, you kept on buying it. If not, you shopped around and chose another.

Tony Blair changed all that. It is easy to lay the blame on him and his cronies and cohorts, but it is also probably fair. Suddenly politics was all about electability. Policy? Give them what they want, and if they don't like it, change to what they do like. Ironically, of course, this demand led policymaking is based on the free market economy model, something Labour have traditionally eschewed and even vilified. Historical policymaking was supply led, a socialist concept.

So Blair and Co invented the politics of elect me, and it worked. Of course it did: we poor hopeless fools who have such trust in the men of Westminster, we believed them. And Blair looked good. Not a trace of Scargillian shabbiness. He banished the ghosts of Foot and Wilson forever. And dash it all, it's not as if the chap is a rank lefty, after all, he went to a decent school, didn't he, we all comforted ourselves.

It is doubtful that even in his more perceptive moments, such as they are, that Blair will realise the appalling damage he wrought, first on our political environment, and second, upon our society.

But enough of Blair - he was merely the instigator.

We now have Cameron, who's ability to espouse causes in the hope of engaging a new segment of the electorate is second to none. He is the master.

He is probably the worst PM Britain has ever had. Wholly devoid of conviction, he flits from advisor to advisor like a butterfly flying from flower to flower, a piece of pollen here, a piece of pollen there, all votes count, DC.

If you suggested to Dave that he stand of the basis of policy, and live or die by it, he would, for a moment, look puzzled, before a slow grin spread across his charming Patrician face, and he would slyly dig you in the ribs, muttering sotto voce "you old dog!"

His are the politics of reaction. He is the master of sound bite, the supreme being of deflection, but at the end of the day he is a balloon, a hollow gathering of nothing.

Margaret Thatcher, or rather the disturbingly grotesque caricature of her, in the recent movie The Iron lady, opined that popularity must be forsaken by politicians, when taking the hard decisions for the long term public good. Dave, one would presume, if he has seen the film, would wake up screaming in a cold sweat should he revisit the scene in his dreams.

He has no fibre. He allows Vince Cable to walk all over him, he lost a virtually unlosable election in allowing the Libs to share the seat of power, he poodles to Merkel and Sarkozy in a way that must have Winston turning in his grave and, worst of all, he lies. Referendum on Europe anybody?

British politics has seen many great men and women, people of true conviction. It is impossible to agree with all of them, but they undeniably stood for what they believed in. David Lloyd George. Winston Churchill; Margaret Thatcher, even Anthony Wedgewood Benn, to name a few. And so we could trust them; trust them to stay upon their stated path.

But Cameron is a mockery of these icons. His is the path of reelectability, and his are the policies of whatever will get him there, as and when they are needed.

And if his people tell him that means forcing private enterprise to promote women to their boards, then that's what is going to happen. Today at least, it may be unpopular tomorrow.